Airfoils are known in various forms and applications and are widely used. For example, they can be used in passenger aircraft, in unmanned aircraft such as drones, and in wind turbine blades. In their forward movement direction, the airfoils have a front edge acting as the leading edge, against which the surrounding fluid flows during movement of the airfoil. During the movement through the fluid, all kinds of dirt are deposited on the leading edge of the airfoil. This can influence the air resistance of the profile or the flow that forms thereon, which is why recurrent cleaning of the leading edge is expedient and desirable, in order to keep energy and fuel consumption low or to reduce power losses.
While known cleaning assemblies do clean the leading edge of the airfoil thoroughly, they do so at an unfavorable time, since in commercial aircraft, for example, a substantial proportion of the dirt is deposited on the leading edges of airfoil profiles during the take-off phase and dirt has already stopped accumulating before the aircraft reaches its service ceiling. In addition, in known cleaning devices, the leading edges of the airfoil profiles undergo a wiping or scraping cleaning process in order to remove the deposited dirt, yet this can bring with it mechanical removal of material from the surface of the airfoil. This may at the very least impair the functioning of hybrid laminar flow control (HLFC) surfaces.